s their lanterns.

"Mr. McLAUGHLIN," he solemnly remarks, waving his umbrella at the graves
around, "in this scene you behold the very last of man's individual
being. In this entombment he ends forever. Tremble, J. McLAUGHLIN!
--forever. Soul and Spirit are but unmeaning words, according
to the latest big things in science. The departed Dr. DAVIS SLAVONSKI,
of St. Petersburg, before setting out for the Asylum, proved, by his
Atomic Theory, that men are neatly manufactured of Atoms of matter,
which are continually combining together until they form Man; and then
going through the process of Life, which is but the mechanical effect of
their combination; and then wearing apart again by attrition into the
exhaustion of cohesion called Death; and then crumbling into separate
Atoms of native matter, or dust, again; and then gradually combining
again, as before, and evolving another Man; and Living, and Dying,
again; and so on forever. Thus, and thus only, is Man immortal. You are
made exclusively of Atoms of matter, yourself, JOHN McLAUGHLIN. So am I."

"I can understand a man's believing that _he, himself,_ is all Atoms of
matter, and nothing else," responds OLD MORTARITY, skeptically.

"As how, JOHN McLAUGHLIN,--as how?"

"When he knows that, at any rate, he hasn't got one atom of common
sense," is the answer.

Suddenly Mr. BUMSTEAD arises from the grave and frantically shakes hands
with him.

"You're right, sir!" he says, emotionally. "You're a gooroleman, sir.
The Atom of common sense was one of the Atoms that SLAVONSKI forgot all
about. Let's do some skeletons now."

At the further end of the pauper burial-ground, and in the rear of the
former Alms-House, once stood a building used successively as a
cider-mill, a barn, and a kind of chapel for paupers. Long ago, from
neglect and bad weather, the frail wooden superstructure had fallen into
pieces and been gradually carted off; but a sturdy stone foundation
remained underground; and, although the flooring over it had for many
years been covered with debris and rank growth, so as to be
undistinguishable to common eyes from the general earth around it, the
great cellar still extended beneath, and, according to weird rumor, had
some secret access for OLD MORTARITY, who used it as a charnel
store-house for such spoils of the grave as he found in his prowlings.

To the spot thus historied the two moralists of the moonlight come now,
and, with many tumbles, Mr. McLAUGHL